Many the people walked eight, ten, and even twelve miles, from the extreme boundary of the parish, and waited about in the kirk or kirk-yard on fine Sundays, and in the Manse kitchen on wet ones--which were much the most frequent--during the two hours' interval between sermons.
In the whole congregation there was hardly a person above the laboring class except in the minister's pew and that belonging to the Castle, which had been newly lined and cushioned, and in a corner of which, safely deposited by Malcolm, the little earl now sat--sat always, even during the prayer, at which some of the congregation looked reprovingly round, but only saw the little figure wrapped in a plaid, and the sweet, wan, childish, and yet unchild-like face, with the curly dark hair, and large dark eyes.
Whatever in the earl was "no a'richt," it certainly could not be his mind, for a brighter, more intelligent countenance was never seen.

It quite startled the minister with the intentness of its gaze from the moment he ascended the pulpit; and though he tried not to look that way, and was very nervous, he could not get over the impression it made.

It was to him almost like a face from the grave--this strange, eerie child's face, so strongly resembling that of the dead countess, who, despite the difference in rank, had, during the brief year she lived and reigned at Cairnforth, been almost like an equal friend and companion to his own dead wife.

Their two faces--Lady Cairnforth's as she looked the last time he saw her in her coffin, and his wife's as she lay in hers--mingled together, and affected him powerfully.
The good minister was not remarkable for the brilliance of his sermons, which he wrote and "committed"-- that is, learned by heart, to deliver in pseudo-extempore fashion, as was the weary custom of most Scotch ministers of his time.

But this Sunday, all that he had committed slipped clean out of his memory.